On what to pick up again

2024-10-13

I'm currently just sitting in my hotel room, and will head out soon. I'm sort of relaxing, but of course it is not like I am properly relaxing, rather I am just doing asocial activities.

It is beginning to get dark, so soon I will want to head out and try to find a place to eat dinner at. That will involve a little bit of effort to find a place that does something that I can ask to be turned vegan (e.g. made without cheese, etc.) but I will I reckon be able to do it.

Now, I will have to come home and catch up on things, but even before that I was a bit behind on many things. For instance, I am looking at thousands, because I have just added press-ups and sit-ups to it. If I actually do these every day, I can make very fast progress, in the order of twelve a day. That will make getting to 1000 very easy, and from there I can change it to 10,000 I suppose. I suppose, looking at the state of /thousands, it is not very impressive. For instance, art has gone up quite a lot recently, but is still only at 17 in total. The gym is only at 37, and guitar has been stagnating at around ten for two months now. Podcast has been of course non-existent for three months. I think really, it would be good to take a kind of last-first approach, where I make sure to do the podcast or the guitar first of all, to ensure that I can get rid of that horrible not-updated-for-three-months label. In other words, I would benefit from trying to ensure that nothing goes without touching for too long.

Wv is something that has actually improved well - I'm at nearly 100. I've exceeded 100k words. I am almost 10% of the way there. Yet, I am not improving as well as I would like, and I know there is no point in me having the guitar in my mind if I am not actually doing it, really. Likewise, the podcast will not actually be in any way there. I think I will still have made good progress on wv and the gym, which are the two that are actually being done. Art is this month getting good progress, but I will need to carry it on for many months if I want any actual gain and improvement, because currently I cannot draw practically at all.

I think adding press-up and sit-up is a good idea precisely because they don't actually involve a lot of work, but will help me to feel as if I am doing some more work than I currently feel I am doing. I am also going to benefit in terms of wv by the amount of writing I am doing: for instance, hopefully, I will have 100 wvs by the end of this month. I've currently written nine this month, and so have eleven more to do, and around eighteen days to do that in. Perfectly easy. I will be able to make gradually progress in what I am doing.

Now, also I need to think about whether I should take advantage in a way of my tendency to drop things after a month or two. For instance, would it be good for me to try the gym, and take advantage of my wanting to drop doing the guitar by telling myself, well, in the time you want to drop the guitar, you can pick up with sketching, or swimming, or one of the other thousands, instead, but be certain not to drop it for too long! In other words, I can take advantage of my short attention span, by ensuring that I still do something to progress the overall goals even when I am slacking. I did that earlier in the year by ensuring that I went swimming (almost) every day when I was not going to the gym for those two months. In the same way, I could try see if that is possible with other things, such as guitar, or drawing. For instance, if I do not draw for the day, I must do guitar. Or something like that. I could try to count the thousands and say that I must progress them by a certain amount each day, but I feel as if that doesn't really take into account real life, where I will always have other things I need to focus on, and so can't necessarily always achieve the target I set myself. Plus, I am not sure whether targets don't make me just not want to do it.

I think, then, I will just add press-ups and sit-ups to the thousands to give me something I can do easy (I could do some in the morning and progress the count by a large amount, easily) and can show that I am actually doing something. Then, when I get back, I can of course immediately sort out the guitar: I may even do a podcast whilst I am here just to clear that one off of the list, and make myself feel good. I can't use the holiday as an excuse not to improve; at the same time, I can't use this idea I have of trying to improve in terms of these metrics as an excuse not to go out and enjoy the city, experience new things, and generally do what I want to do on a holiday (relax). In a way, this is kind of my relaxation for my relaxation: I am away from work and relaxing by exploring a new city, and when my legs grow tired from walking and my mind from all the people and the trying to talk to waitstaff in a foreign language, I am now at the hotel to recuperate by writing. That sort of makes sense in my eyes.

I'll actually head out now for dinner (it's seven in the evening). Have a good one.